


degrees of separation

by jubilantly



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 18:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20697896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubilantly/pseuds/jubilantly
Summary: Three times Mabeuf didn't meet Monsieur Fauchelevent, and one time he did and, miracle of miracles, managed to befriend him.





	degrees of separation

**Author's Note:**

> Posted originally [here on tumblr](https://coelenterata.tumblr.com/post/186964029095) for pilferingapples who wanted Mabeuf and Mother Plutarch to be happy; putting it on AO3 for findability.

1

Despite there being little chance of someone leaving their address in their purse, Mabeuf empties the purse and checks, and is, so to speak, lucky: there is a piece of paper in there that looks like a letter, a short note but a letter nonetheless, with an address on it that is mostly readable, and the seal of the letter is broken, so presumably the owner of the purse was its recipient.

Mabeuf copies the address, and then he puts everything back into the purse, counted out and counted back in, and tells Mother Plutarch of his discovery.

She looks less relieved than he feels, and he understands, because he is already not much relieved, but what has to be done has to be done, for the sake of doing the right thing, and if there hadn’t been the letter he would have found some other way to try and return the purse to its owner.

As it is, the letter was there, and he has an address, and the very next day he sets out.

Rue de l’Ouest, it said, and he doesn’t quite know how to get there, and he does not like to have to ask strangers for directions, so he walks to a bookshop he knows, and he asks for directions there and gets them, though he also gets an irritated look.

No matter: he knows where to go, and he goes, even as his feet get tired, and he finds the street and he finds the right house, and he finds the porter.

It’s an odd conversation, it seems to be two conversations, the porter is suspicious and confused and Mabeuf is confused and attempting to return a purse to a man who has apparently moved out, but finally the porter does accept the purse and does promise to send it on to its rightful owner, and Mabeuf leaves, relieved and tired and still not sure who “you people” is (“my name is Mabeuf,” he had said, confused, not sure how to say, and I am not part of any we or you), and why the porter thought he meant harm (he had gotten very angry about Mabeuf’s question of the purse’s owner’s new address), or what kind of harm that would be.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, the purse will get back to the man it belongs to, and Mabeuf will go home, where everything is as it has been, familiar if nothing else.

2

For all that Toussaint loves the Fauchelevent family, she does have to admit that they are strange; Cosette not so much, or only in the ways a girl naturally would end up, having been raised in a convent as horrid as the one Cosette was raised in, and then strange in some of the ways a girl is if nobody tells her to be neat and quiet, but Toussaint likes that about Cosette, feels overwhelming fondness for this girl who dresses in silk and then goes to dig in the dirt and never stops being fascinated by the world. Monsieur Fauchelevent, on the other hand, is decidedly an odd one, and it becomes seldom more obvious than when Toussaint is doing the shopping and has been tasked to buy for him what he would find too cheap to give to her, a mere servant.

At least this is not a thing visible to others – there is a woman next to Toussaint this day at the market who is getting more and more embarrassed about the small sum of money she has and the pitiful amount of food she can afford to buy, and from her half-sentences, Toussaint learns that she isn’t only feeding herself, but a master, too.

“Here,” says Toussaint, finally, pulls out the money given to her in addition to what she needed, in case there would be an occasion to give alms, and hands it to the other woman, who continues for another few words, and then stops and stares.

“My God,” she says, “You don’t have to– that is, I would be very grateful, you see we would have had money enough for a while, but Monsieur Mabeuf insisted that a purse that falls from the heavens must be returned to its owner, and– that is, thank you.”

Toussaint smiles, and nods, and thinks that name sounds familiar, thinks she may know whose purse it was, but isn’t sure enough in that knowledge or in herself to say anything more, and they both buy what they need to, and go their separate ways home.

3

Mabeuf wanders, sometimes, to distract himself, walks and walks, looking furtively into the gardens of others when he passes by, finding himself far away from the bustling city without consciously choosing the streets that will lead him out, without even reading the street names.

It’s a good distraction, it is, from everything, it is a relief to go out with a book under his arm and no intention of giving it away, and no intention of talking to anyone either; it is good to be where there is air and dreamlike familiar unfamiliarity of his surroundings, it is good to see other people’s gardens, flowers blooming elsewhere even if his own won’t quite.

He doesn’t get too lost usually, but sometimes he does, and so too this day, lost in thought and in worry and then lost in winding streets, and when he looks up again he knows no roof and no door and no name, and there is a walled-off garden there that he hasn’t seen before, and before he can get more immediately worried in addition to the old, long worries, he gets a proper glimpse of that garden through a gate a few steps ahead, and has to pause and look at it, look at it until his eyes and mind and heart are full, because it is a beautiful garden, different from his, not at all how he would have his garden, but undeniably beautiful.

It is confirmation that he hasn’t been here before, too – to have forgotten the name of Rue Plumet wouldn’t have been surprising; to have forgotten this garden… impossible.

Even though he knows it’s in part because he is tired and tired and tired, in every way, he thinks he could look at this garden forever, at its fullness and its buzzing life and its green glowing safety.

How long he stands there, he doesn’t know, but when he is pulled out of his thoughts it is by the voice of a girl standing inside the garden some feet away from the gate.

“Monsieur, are you lost?”, she says, amusedly and kindly.

She looks like the spirit of this garden, Mabeuf thinks, and mutely shakes his head.

“Well, are you looking for anyone?”, the girl further inquires, and, “I doubt it would be us, we do not get visitors, but…”

“No, no,” says Mabeuf, halting, already moving away, “my apologies. Your garden is beautiful.”

And he turns around and leaves, to get more lost until he finds a familiar place that will help guide him home.

+1

It has been difficult from the beginning, to sell his books, and it gets harder with each one, because the lesser pains are already over with. He wishes it would stop, this gradual worsening loss, but it won’t, and so he is selling another book, selling what is to him equivalent to his life, only to live a bit longer.

The bookseller looks at the book with a frown, and tells him the price he would pay, and Mabeuf cannot bear it, and he asks for a moment to consider, and gets to hold his book a little longer, and stands there clutching it to his chest and then paging through it reverently, and when he is about to say goodbye to it, a broad-shouldered man approaches, quietly, goes past Mabeuf and takes care not to bump into him and goes up to the bookseller, and lets Mabeuf have another minute, he thinks, only the bookseller tells the stranger that there is another man who is in the process of selling, and to wait, and Mabeuf has to step forward, no matter how little he wants to.

The stranger, kind-faced, looks at Mabeuf, and Mabeuf knows how he must look, tottering, clutching at his book like it is alive, like it was alive and has died and he can’t bear to know it just yet.

Mabeuf sells his book as quickly as he can, even as the stranger watches and the bookseller looks bored and disapproving, and then he tries to leave as quickly as he can, too, but the stranger reaches out a hand, halts him.

“Allow me,” says the stranger, “to buy your book, and gift it back to you.”

“I,” says Mabeuf, “You. I don’t follow?”

The stranger bows his head a little.

“It looked important to you, the book. I would like to see that you do not have to give it away.”

Mabeuf blinks at the stranger, and stutters, and the stranger smiles, and turns to the bookseller and tells him that he wants to buy the book, and the bookseller too looks dumbstruck but takes the money and hands over the book, and Mabeuf has not moved at all by the time the stranger turns back to him and presents him with his book.

“Thank you–”, Mabeuf stumbles over the words, reaches for his book, and the man is still smiling.

They stand there, for a moment that is not as awkward as Mabeuf thinks it should be, but still very very strange, and then the man clears his throat.

“What is your name?”

Like this isn’t the strangest and kindest thing anyone has ever done for Mabeuf.

“Mabeuf,” he says, and clutches his book helplessly to his chest.

The man bows his head again, and smiles yet deeper, a little amused in the grave kindness now.

“Fauchelevent. And I believe I’ve heard your name before. Did you by chance return a purse some time ago that had come to you from the heavens?”

And that is when things change, Mabeuf will think later, though of course they nearly changed many times before, and what comes later will come partly because near-misses came before; this will be not one book saved but all of them, though Mabeuf doesn’t know that yet, he is still merely grateful and confused, and for once not just uncomfortable talking to someone he doesn’t know, and so he only nods, quietly affirms, accepts this coincidence.

Fauchelevent nods too, decisive.

“Let me return to you the purse that is rightfully yours, then,” he says. “I don’t think I have the full amount with me, but if you would give me your address, I will visit tomorrow and return it.”

Mabeuf stammers again, and the bookseller coughs pointedly and they both apologize and move away, next to each other, and then they stand in the street and Fauchelevent is still expectant and Mabeuf wants to cry and laugh in confused gratitude, and Fauchelevent is starting to lament his lack of foresight in not having a writing implement, and then a carriage moves past them and someone waves on the other side of the street and a bright voice calls out.

A girl of maybe sixteen, dressed in what must surely be the height of fashion because the dress looks very expensive, comes hurrying towards them, followed by a woman who must be a housekeeper, and the girl exclaims a greeting to Monsieur Fauchelevent, whom she calls Papa, and then stops and looks between her Papa and Mabeuf, smiling, and Mabeuf recognizes with not a little bewilderment the girl from that garden, the very spirit of that garden, and she smiles at him too, when she has finished the long sentence she had directed at her father about ribbons and too about rye bread, Mabeuf does not understand anything.

“You found your way home then, those weeks ago?”, she says, still smiling. “I wasn’t aware you knew my father.”

“We only just met,” the father in question says, smiling faintly now too, though a little wary, and, “this is Monsieur Mabeuf. Monsieur Mabeuf, my daughter Cosette.”

Definitely wary, but Mabeuf is too confused to do anything but bow his head politely and start to look to Fauchelevent again, only there is another interruption.

The housekeeper has made a surprised noise, and flushes a little when the Fauchelevents both turn to look at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, falling over her syllables, and to Mabeuf, “Your housekeeper is well? I never asked for her name, I–”

“As– as well as can be expected, given the circumstances,” says Mabeuf, still more confused, and he will never remember, later, how the conversation ends, but he remembers always that he must have given Fauchelevent his address, because Fauchelevent visits the next day, and gifts Mabeuf not only the amount of money that was in the purse but twice it, and talks to Mabeuf about books and about plants first only politely and then like he too cares very much about the subjects, and he is knowledgeable and he listens and he insists on Mabeuf keeping the money, and then he makes to leave when it has been a lot longer than is polite to keep a guest or to bother a host, and when he puts on his hat again and bows and turns away, Mabeuf gets up too, and gets together his courage, and says, “would you visit again?”

Fauchelevent turns to him again, looking surprised.

“Only,” says Mabeuf, “I’ve enjoyed your company. I don’t– this isn’t about the money. I have enjoyed your company and conversation. Please visit again, if you have the time.”

And Fauchelevent looks not amused at the clumsy attempt to ask for friendship, but as surprised now as someone who has never been offered friendship, and after a moment he nods, and smiles, and then he does leave.

And he returns the next day, and the next, and the next.

And brings a book, and brings a greeting from his daughter and a greeting from Toussaint to Mother Plutarch, and brings another book, and another, and brings his daughter, and brings among protests more money, and brings books again and again for Mabeuf to keep, and most of all he brings his company.

Mabeuf is very glad for Fauchelevent’s friendship, a thing he never thought he would be able to say and mean about anyone, and he thinks maybe Fauchelevent is glad too, and just as surprised by it as Mabeuf.


End file.
